At one moment in the recent CCE / G&E SIG webinar Prof. Anderson-Levitt made mention of Guy Vincent’s work on the notion of the forme scolaire and the finding that increasingly — at least in middle class homes in certain cultural settings — parents seem to be more and more interacting with their children in the guise of teacher. Especially in the “preschool” years (a telling descriptor in and of itself!) children’s home environments seem to be ever more permeated by educational initiatives. Many of the cultural “forms” of schooling that at one point in history were more commonly found inside institutions of schooling now are common features of many middle-class homes: present not just in chalkboards and worksheets, but also in parenting behaviors around the regulation of time-practices and efforts to orient children towards learning in particular ways.
This observation brings to mind the concepts of educationalization and pedagogization as they have discussed in recent work spearheaded by Belgian historian of education Marc Depaepe. As part of trying to get a better understanding of the ever-increasing central role of the pedagogical in society these scholars discuss educationalization as not just limited to schooling institutions but also explore how everyday non-educational issues become defined in terms of (lifelong) learning, skills, competencies, assessments and performance.
All of this might stand as a useful reminder that when CIES members gather in Puerto Rico at the end of April 2012 to attend a conference that bears the title “The Worldwide Education Revolution” we need to be sure not only to discuss the implications of the dramatic expansion of formal schooling in terms of institutions. To the extent that we can speak on a global scale of an “emerging schooled society” it would be one emerging not simply due to the educational journeys of increasing numbers of people through schooling institutions. It is clearly important to also consider “non-formal education,” however even that category may not be casting the net wide enough — in important ways, the schooled societies of the 21st century may be emerging through the uptake and hybridization of cultural behaviors, habits, expectations and standards that increasingly “educationalize” social problems and human endeavors.
And let us not forget our history. My understanding of the word “pedagogical” is that it is a seventeenth century word (someone correct me if I am wrong) and so I ask if the “process of education,” formal or non-formal arises in a “pedagogical” sense only after emerging societies develop the lexicon do describe what was happening? As for educational experiences in the home (as directed by parents) certainly has a history unto itself that, for the case of the United States is partially developed in parenting advice books of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century that advocated particular educational practices and made in some cases specific curriculum recommendations. I would like to hear from scholars that know of similar historical developments in non-English speaking nations. Thus, “the global scale of an emerging schooled society” both formal and non-formal may also have a broader historical basis that is growing as fast as its future development.
In one “non-English speaking nation”–that provides, I imagine, an instance of others–the process has ironically come full circle. Earlier, education was not in sites distinguishable from the home. There was no separate school building or institution. When the British colonisers first gathered statistics, most indigenous schools they enumerated were in homes. Over the nineteenth century, they replaced these with separate sites called ‘schools’ and de-legitimised the use of the term for anything that savoured of ‘home.’ Until by approximately 1900 there were no more indigenous schools left to be counted, because the definition of schools did not include those conducted at home.
In India even today, but certainly over the last 150 years, education is carried on in the home. Scholars of education, and others, do not count it as ‘education’ and do not discuss it under the same headings as their ‘education.’ But people are quite clear as to what they are doing and how influential and weighty the home is in forming the child.
My reason for bringing this up is to ask what precisely the value would be of first separating, then discussing the overlap between, the home and the school? Partly the exercise becomes one in distinct histories with each their own chronologies and proceeses. As concepts, do ‘home’ and ‘school’ have meanings that we can do somethig with? What Sobe has written is pertinent for certain histories, but for India I have a different take on home-school relationship and its relevance.
Hi Nita,
I believe “home” and “school” are certainly sites where education and methods of schooling are practiced and–perhaps once they are shared–become articulated practices of pedagogy. Certainly your example is critical and for me served as a reminder of the importance of building historical knowledge, in which more modern educational practices can be added, in order to build models for understanding how different societies practice and negotiate schooling and conceptualize education as a social and cultural institution. Moreover, I think that this type of inquiry and research is particularly critical (and interesting) for indigenous societies living within larger social and political entities. I myself like to research examples of American Indian schooling both historically and the current re-emergence of indigenous cultural practices and languages as part of school curriculum and cultural recovery. Thank you for sharing this example.
Sounds like your study would be an interesting addition to study within the US American context, Annmarie. It would be interesting to know if your study would bring additional insights about the link between historic oppression & repression of American Indians within the mainstream society and its resurgence of indigenous cultural practices. Noah and Nita, it was interesting to read two different historic perspectives on the issue of schooling in two different socio-cultural contexts. If one would follow Anderson-Levitt’s reference of Laura Nader’s suggestion to “study up”, then an ethnographic study of your posts as two historians (arising from two different cultural contexts and parts of the world, but now both based in academic institutions within the US) itself makes ethnographic work in the age of globalization challenging. Here Noah’s theory of the “emerging schooled society” at a global scale as part of the hegemonic globalizing process of “global culture” completely cuts across Nita’s theory of global Indian society (including the diaspora abroad) as highly schooled based on pre-colonial indigenous Indian practices of home schooling, which the British colonial project in India aimed at wiping out much like the mainstream US American project over the spiritual educational practices of the American Indian communities. The colonial project was to create “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” (Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education in 1835). However, the indigenous cultural practices (which is based on deeper values and beliefs) persisted. The colonial project fractured & back-fired in creating an elite class of persons who rose against the mighty empire. Thus, the postcolonial Indian elites often combine peculiar & contradictory characteristics of ethnocentric nationalism following the freedom movement, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals (esp. w.r.to colonial capitalism), and in intellect as MacCaulay designed them to be. While the spiritual and indigenous cultural practices of home schooling & education (not as Pink Flyod would say “thought control” but as “Gyana Yoga”) still persists among both the elites and non-elite Indian society. As Nita has rightly pointed out the home and school relationship was never so bifurcated in the Indian social imaginary as it is in the mainstream Western social imaginary.
please disregard the typo above. I meant to type Pink Floyd. For those interested, here’s an important scholarly publication which is helpful in understanding the historic colonial educational project in India: http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Subject_lessons.html?id=stzT0dL1w-IC&redir_esc=y
Here’s an online site briefly explaining Gyana/ Jnana Yoga I mentioned above \Jnana yoga, also called gyana yoga, is the yoga of true knowledge. It is based on the Hindu philosophy of nondualism, called advaita (nondual) vedanta (Vedic knowledge). A similar nondualistic view of reality is held by many branches of Buddhism, including Zen, by Taoism, by Islamic Sufism, as well as by some branches of Christianity that follow the Gospel of Thomas.\: http://www.sanatansociety.org/yoga_and_meditation/jnana_yoga_gyana_dhyana.htm